I Wish You A Mary Christmas

Welcome to Worship in the Word with Pastor Robert Morris. Today we're listening to a special Christmas message about how God desires each of us to deliver miracles to the world like Mary did.

This is an incredibly insightful message, so let's join Pastor Robert now. Turn to Luke chapter one. Merry Christmas, by the way. Merry Christmas.

Luke chapter one. And the title of the message is a little different, but I think you'll understand why I entitle it this. The title is, I wish you a Merry Christmas. Now you have to look at it to see that I spelled Mary as the name is spelled.

And put it in quotations. And here's what I'm saying to you, that a miracle happened in Mary over 2,000 years ago, and I'm praying that that miracle happens in each of us. Now, ladies, relax. I mean spiritually.

Okay? What I'm saying is, is that Jesus was conceived in Mary, a miracle conceived a miracle conception, she carried that miracle, and then she delivered that miracle to the world. I believe that this story, although obviously it is true, obviously, I'm wondering, though, if it has a symbolic meaning. I'm wondering if God's desire is for His Son's life to be conceived in all of us, to grow in all of us, and to be delivered through all of us to the world around us.

So I want you to look at it with me, all right? Luke chapter one, beginning in verse 26. Luke 1, 26. Now in the sixth month, now let me just tell you why it says that. It's talking about the pregnancy of Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, who was carrying John the Baptist. So in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, all right? And you'll see that later in the text as well, and you could read above and notice that also. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee.

Now I just want you to notice the geography of this. To a city of Galilee named Nazareth. To a virgin betrothed or engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, rejoice, highly favored one.

The Lord is with you, blessed are you among women. Now we're going to continue reading, but I want to make an observation here that is an obvious observation. I know that, but it jumped off the page at me and I thought I just felt so compelled by the Holy Spirit to make this observation. This angel goes to a specific region, a specific city, a specific house into a specific room. And delivers this message to Mary.

Now here's the obvious observation, but I think we need to hear this. God knows where you live. Can you imagine if this angel goes in this room, probably dark, probably at night, and makes this announcement, you know, you're blessed, you're highly favored, you're going to have a son, da-da-da-da. And all of a sudden he hears this deep voice says, my name's not Mary, it's Harry.

Mary moved about two months ago, her family, they lived three blocks. Okay, it didn't happen that way. I know it's obvious. I know it's obvious. But God knows where you live. Some of you probably used some type of a program at some point, something like Google Earth, where you type in your address and it's way up high and it zooms all the way down to your house. Listen, God's more amazing than Google Earth.

He's more updated also, by the way. We put some landscape in our backyard, it's still not on Google Earth. God knows where you live. And sometimes, even at Christmas especially, we need to be reminded of that because the enemy can come and tell us God's forgotten about you, but he has not forgotten about you. And he wants to conceive a miracle in your life also. So let's keep reading here. Look at verse 30. By the way, every time a word from God comes, the natural response would be fear.

We have to receive it in fear of faith. Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God and behold, you will conceive, notice the word conceive, in your womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus. So I have three observations and we'll read some more in Luke one. But here's the first one, the conceiving of the miracle. What did Mary have to do for this miracle to be conceived in her?

And many people would say nothing, but that's not correct. Let's keep reading. Look at verse 34. Then Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I do not know a man?

And that's to know a man intimately. And the angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you. This happens in every miracle. And the power of the highest will overshadow you.

Completely cover you and protect you. Therefore, also that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Now, indeed, Elizabeth, your relative has also conceived a son in her old age.

And this is now the sixth month. That's that's where we get this from for her, who was called Baron. For with God, nothing will be impossible. Then Mary said, behold, the maid servant of the Lord. In other words, I submit myself to you. Let it be to me, according to you. Your word and the angel departed from her. That is a huge statement to be able to conceive a miracle. Let it be to me, according to your word. In other words, when God speaks a word to you, you have to receive it by faith. You have to choose if you're going to believe that word or not. And Mary, it's a very human response to respond, even as Mary did at the first. How can this be?

How can this be? Think about when you receive a doctor's report or when you hear a bad report. Or when someone says something about you that's not true and you just think, how can this be? And God gives you a word. Be at peace.

Be at peace. You have to hear the next word, because with God, all things are possible. Nothing is impossible with God. And then we have to respond in the same way Mary did and say, be it unto me, according to your word. I make a choice to serve you, the maid servant of the Lord.

I make a choice to serve you and to believe you. And if we'll do that, then the miracle cannot only be conceived, but can begin to grow in us. You put an OS on the end of it for the Greek word, and it simply means messenger, the messenger of the Lord. In other words, the power was not in the angel. It was in the word of the Lord. The power for a miracle is in the word of the Lord, not the messenger.

It really doesn't matter who the messenger is. This word, angelos, is actually translated in the New Testament and other places, messenger, messenger. And in Revelation 2 and 3, chapters 2 and 3, where Jesus is doing or saying to John what many theologians call the seven love letters to the church, where he's speaking into the churches. He begins each letter with to the angel of the church of Thyatira, to the angel of the church of Laodicea, to the angel of the church of Philadelphia, not Pennsylvania, by the way, but to the angel.

These seven were in Asia Minor. Here's the point. Most theologians believe he wasn't speaking to an angel as we were thinking, but to the messenger or listen to the senior pastor. Now, I know that all senior pastors are not angels, but some of us are. I mean, some are.

Here's my point. God wants to speak a word in you and he wants to conceive a miracle in your life. Don't get hung up on how it comes. It could come in your quiet time.

It could come through someone else, a friend. How many times have you we've been in conversation with someone and they're talking and all of a sudden we sense this is God talking to me. And at that point, we have to say, Lord, I believe it. I will believe it.

And that's the conception of a miracle. Now, I want you to do something because I like to do things like this every now and then. And I want you to actually find someone beside you that you can say something to at every campus now. So turn right now. So you're facing someone.

And if there's someone left out, you know, an odd person, not an odd person, a person that doesn't have someone, then then include them in your group. So it might be three. It's OK if it's three. But I want you to turn right now every campus and I want you to repeat after me. I want you to look them right in the eye and I want you to say something to you.

Ready? Say this. God wants to get you pregnant. Now, we just had a husband right over here pass out. The reason that I like to do things like that is because you tend to remember things like that. But I want you when you remember that and smile to remember God wants to conceive a miracle in me.

Will you receive that? So that's the conception of the miracle. Here's point number two, the caring of the miracle. We talk a lot about the virgin birth, which we should, and the birth of Christ. But we don't talk much about the pregnancy, the in-between time, from the time the miracle is conceived until the miracle is complete.

And this is the caring of the miracle. Now, notice we know what Mary did during this time. Again, look at Luke one, verse thirty nine. Now, Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste to a city of Judah.

Judah is a very barren desert wilderness. Have you ever been there? And she left Galilee, a very fruitful land and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. This is the mother of John the Baptist. And it happened when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary that the babe, that's John, leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

We also know John was filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother's womb because earlier in Luke, it tells us that. And then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. But why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Now, watch verse forty five.

Careful. This goes back to what we were talking about before. Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord. And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord that we call this the Magnificat. And my spirit has rejoiced in God, my savior, for he has regarded the lowly state of his maidservant. For behold, henceforth, all nations will call me blessed. And this word again, blessed means happy. It doesn't mean in any way that we deatize Mary or pray to her. That became a tradition, but it's nowhere in scripture that we should do anything like that. But we do honor the fact that God did a miracle in her.

But the way we honor that, I believe, is to allow God to do a miracle in us. And I want you to notice a couple of things that she did. The first thing she did, if you're going to carry a miracle, this is what she did. She got around another miracle carrier. She immediately went to someone. You have to remember that Mary's story was not believable.

You know, now tell me again how you got pregnant. Oh, the Holy Spirit came on. Yeah, that happened to Jim's girlfriend, too.

You know, it's not a very believable story. She's probably around a lot of people that would be negative and talk negative about her and even look down on her. So the first thing she does is she gets around someone else who's had a miracle in her. And that person encourages her and says, listen, Mary, you're blessed. You're highly favored of the Lord.

You have believed and because you believe there's going to be a fulfillment. So I'm telling you, if you want to birth a miracle, you're going to get around other people who are in that same business, who want to birth miracles. And then this magnificat, I didn't read the whole song that is attributed to Mary, but it is my soul magnifies. Magnificat is the Latin word for magnified.

She she magnified the Lord. Now, just think about what a magnifying glass does. It makes something larger.

Do you realize that in every situation in life, you have a choice rather to make the circumstances larger or make God larger in your heart? Obviously, we can't make God larger, but we can make our view of Him larger every time something goes wrong in your life. And the way that you make something larger, think about it, is you focus on it. That's what a magnifying glass does. It brings it into focus. If you were having trouble seeing something as small, you'd bring it into focus.

You'd make it larger. Listen, if you think about the negative circumstances, you just make them appear larger in your life. But the way that we magnify God and praise Him is we begin to focus on Him. Even when I got, you know, an attack of the enemy this last week and what I did, I just got in the word. I read Psalms 25 through Psalm 45. I just read those 21 chapters right there.

And I just it took me a little over an hour to do that. And boy, by the end of it, God was so big in me instead of the circumstances being so big in me. I want to encourage you, there is something to carrying the miracle in a worthy manner. Ephesians four, verse one. Paul said, I therefore, the prison of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling which you were called.

Galatians 4 19 says, my little children for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you. In the same way in the natural, a woman who's carrying a baby does things differently than if she's not carrying another life. She eats differently. She's protective of what she does, where she goes. She's protective of her stomach.

I don't know if you notice this. Our daughter-in-law is pregnant. And I noticed that just yesterday she holds her stomach a lot and she rubs it. I even said to her, why do you rub your stomach? She said, I'm trying to tell him settle down.

I'm here. Stop kicking. They walk differently. They sit differently.

They rise differently. Part of that is a natural thing because they're they have someone growing inside of them. Debbie's a very small woman, a petite woman. She got very large with our children.

And it was kind of one of those things where it was difficult because people kept commenting. When she was five months pregnant, people kept saying, any day now? And then she'd say, no, I'm just five months.

Then it would they'd make it worse. They dig the hole deeper. Twins. She walked in one time to her coworker and her coworker said, you need to have that baby.

You look obnoxious. So it's a really encouraging time for her. But a woman who's pregnant is always conscious that she's carrying another life form within her.

Another life, another person. Could we as believers be always conscious that we are carrying the Lord Jesus and that he is growing inside of us? So there's the carrying of the miracle. And then number three is the completion of the miracle, the delivery, the completion of the miracle.

If you look in Luke chapter two there, you're probably close enough to see this in Luke two, verses six and seven. So it was that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end. Now I know this is a wonderful story to us now because it's now the Christmas story, but I don't know if we ever thought about it, it really wasn't that wonderful for Mary.

She had to make a trip, a long trip when she was nine months pregnant. And then her baby is coming and they're not in a hotel, they're in a cave. Most people have drawn it as a barn.

Most didn't have barns back then, they were caves. And she delivers her baby, this miracle of God in a cave, and she lays him in a feeding trough. That's what manger means. It's just, I think God came up with a better word and we all say manger, but it was a feeding trough.

Here's what I'm saying. The miracle, even when it comes, might not come like you think it should come. Eight days later, they go to the temple to dedicate Jesus. The law forbade Mary for going for seven days after birth, and that's why they circumcised him and dedicated him on the eighth day. So on the eighth day, she goes to the temple, Joseph and Mary, with Jesus. There's a prophet there named Simeon. He prophesies over Jesus, and then he turns and prophesies over Mary.

Do you know what his prayer is? His prophecy over her is a sword is going to pierce your soul. That's not a great prophecy. And 33 years later, she's standing at the foot of a cross as they take the lifeless body of her baby off that cross. Come back to that word, Lord, you said, you said, but God knew. Because if the cross had not happened, we wouldn't be here today. I'm telling you, the miracle might look differently, but if you'll commit to, if you'll conceive it, if you'll believe when God speaks to you, if you'll carry it in a worthy manner, here's the good news, Jesus, God, will complete it. We even have a very specific verse, Philippians 1, 6, being confident in this very thing, that he who has begun or conceived a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Now, I want to make one more observation about this, the story of Christmas and Mary, especially. I'm developing this message, God, what a great, great message. You know, what a great analogy, what a great illustration, what a great point to help people understand that you want to conceive miracles in us, that you want us to carry those miracles, that you want us to deliver Jesus to the world. This is wonderful, Lord. And then all of a sudden I had this thought, but I'm not like Mary. I don't know if you've ever had a thought like this, because Mary was pure and I haven't been pure. And as soon as I thought of that, I actually thought of a scripture in 1 Corinthians 6, let me read it to you. Verse 9 says, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Now, I just want you to look at this list. I want you to see if you're on this list, all right? Neither fornicators nor idolaters, anyone who has something before God, any idol, nor adulterers, Jesus said, if a man looks at a woman to lust, he's committed adultery, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

Now I got bad news for you. I made the list like three times. This is not the list you want to be on. And if the verse stopped there, if the Bible stopped there, I'd be in trouble. But look at the next verse, and such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. Because of the grace of God, I make another list now. I make a list that qualifies me to carry a miracle and to deliver that miracle to the world.

As a matter of fact, Paul uses the exact same word for Mary, speaking of believers in 2nd Corinthians 11.2. I am jealous for you with godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Because of grace, I'm qualified to carry Jesus to the world. We want you to take a moment to think about what Pastor Robert shared today and really listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you. If you want to connect with us or check out some of Pastor Robert's other messages, visit pastorrobert.com. And if you haven't already, go follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter so we can be a part of your community. We're so glad you took time out of your busy Christmas season to tune in today. We pray this message brought hope to you, and we wish you a very merry Christmas.